


Season of Giving

by iloveyoudie



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Christmas Eve, Drinking in the Morgue, M/M, Mistletoe, Working on Christmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 19:06:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17249708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iloveyoudie/pseuds/iloveyoudie
Summary: The detective moved to the drawer in which he knew Debryn kept his own alcohol stash and brought out a set of glasses. This wasn’t their first mutual venture into morgue drinking.





	Season of Giving

Dr. Debryn stood in several inches of powdery snow under the golden cast of a street lamp. The flakes had been falling steadily since late afternoon and the evening glow now made Oxford look like a glittering winter wonderland. Debryn, coated in a fine layer of the stuff, bounced on his toes impatiently beside a huddled and shrouded figure that sat unmoving and as covered in snow as the bench they occupied. The doctor flourished a gesture towards the corpse in his usual dramatic fashion, "Ruth in Rigid Repose."

As Morse approached, he thought the doctor looked a bit like a Christmas elf with his red tipped ears poking above the swaddle of a candy striped scarf wrapped around the bottom half of his face and muffling the soft visible puffs of his breath. Debryn didn't strike him as the festive sort but the scarf and the sprig of holly pinned to his greatcoat said otherwise.

"Ruth Baker according to her identification. Sixty-three years old and local resident. She did have her handbag, everything intact and as expected for a woman of her age. A few bob, shopping list, cosmetics, a hand mirror and keys. No sign of anything untoward."

"Easy identification is nothing short of a Christmas miracle," Morse leaned a bit to look at the woman's frozen features. Her eyes were closed as if she had simply dozed off. It was peaceful enough and Morse didn't feel the slightest bit of discomfort near a body in stasis such as this.

"For a lazy copper, yes. I'm not sure Ms. Baker would agree about your miracle though."

Morse cut him an unamused look, "Time of death?"

"Anytime between noon and five on Christmas Eve. That would be tonight, Morse, in case you hadn't noticed. Why are you working?"

"Someone's got to," Morse said dismissively, "What about you?"

"People have families to see. Mine happened to take a holiday in Florida this year."

"Dodged a bullet there, hm?" Morse's lips curled with amused disgust.

"Palm trees and cartoon mice are not my idea of a yuletide adventure," Debryn agreed with an approving nod and a subtle twitch of a smile.

"But bodies are?" Morse provided helpfully.

"Let us not forget the most astute and charming of policemen for company. Better the enemy you know, Morse," Max tilted his head with a pursed lipped smirk before returning to his notes.

Morse appraised the man a moment in the quiet swirl of the snowflakes. He watched Max as he got the last few scribbles down and flipped his notebook shut. When he was caught watching, Morse finally continued, "Not very precise, your time of death."

"A shop-keep across the road remembered seeing her feeding pigeons around noon, according to your uniformed man. She's the one who called it in. Noticed her still here at closing time. I'm certainly no weather man, but I do have eyes. The snow started around five and she's got the same amount of accumulation as the bench itself," Max gestured obviously, "It may be a bit complicated for your rather limited faculties, but taking into account the outside temperature and her own body cooling-"

"Alright, alright," Morse rolled his eyes because he knew Max was just winding up, "I assume you've got to thaw her out a bit before you know an accurate time and cause of death?"

"You're coming on, Morse. Well done."

With no obvious signs of theft, violence or trauma Morse mostly just served as a silent witness. Only the post mortem would tell them if it was anything suspicious but an old woman passing on while feeding the birds wouldn't likely require much more than contacting the family.

Morse was waiting by Debryn's car after the ambulance men had packed up Ms. Baker and whisked her back to the hospital.

"Have a drink later?" Morse's pale brows rose with a small amount of hope.

"Christmas Eve with the pathologist, Morse? What might people say?" Max's mouth twitched coyly.

Morse had been giving that a lot of thought lately. Since their last evening of drinking together, in fact. Since too many lingering looks and touches and an awkward goodbye much too late in the evening that left him rife with regret and things unsaid.

What might people say?

Yes, he'd been thinking quite a bit about it and realized that he didn't much care.

***

Morse's holiday was just beginning when he walked through the morgue doors later that evening with a bottle of Bells in hand. He'd initially tried to work Christmas Day as well but the stragglers around the station had queued up for the extra holiday hours. Morse's Christmas morning currently had nothing promising in it but the crossword, a cup of tea and perhaps a venture out to one of a handful of holiday events around the city if he was feeling ambitious. He could at least try to make his Eve a bit more memorable than an anti-climactic call out.

Max barely looked up from his grisly work when Morse appeared, "Is it that time already? The hours got away from me. I've a bit to do yet, Morse."

"In affairs of human danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry," Morse recited while simultaneously spinning his head away from what Max was doing. He could confirm it wasn't their frozen Ms. Baker (nor a Ms. at all) and all it took was one glance at the doctor up to his elbows in bloody gloves for Morse to recoil with a sharp inhale.

Max looked up approvingly at the quotation but his expression darkened when he saw Morse's standard revulsion, "If you wilting-lily on me, Morse, I'll leave you on the tile all night."

" _Tch_ , I've been improving. I'll just stay back here, shall I?" Morse put the bottle on the desk against the wall and browsed the same shelves he'd stared at a thousand times while attempting to avoid the slab.

"I shouldn't be-" Max paused and a wet sort of sound followed and spun Morse's stomach, "letting you loiter, technically speaking. This one's hospital business. But it's Christmas and no one gives a damn. Including me."

The doctor's glasses were slipping down his nose and his dark blue eyes flicked above them, "As long as you can keep conscious, I wouldn't mind the company."

"I'll kick this corpse thing, surely. What do they call it, exposure therapy?" Morse said with shaky confidence.

"If it was that easy, I'm sure it would have happened by now," Max straightened and grimaced as his back twinged, "But a small bit of advice, I've always found it easier not to think of them as people so much at this stage. Be a dear and hand me that there-" he flicked a gloved hand towards a file at Morse's hip, "yes, that's the one."

Morse brought the folder obediently. He'd noticed, once he'd taken the time to really watch Max work, that he didn't handle the bodies as if they were people at all. At least not so much. They were respected as much as one could, but jostled and flipped and rolled, examined with scrutiny in the way the automotive boys took a car apart with precision and then put it back together with no one knowing the better. In a way, it did make it easier to detach from his humanity long enough to survive being in the room.

"No family plans for you?" Max motioned for him to drop the folder on a closer table but Morse was still looking away. The doctor's nose scrunched pointedly, "Also, if you wouldn't mind lending a hand-"

"My family doesn't really do get togethers," Morse looked at Debryn curiously and smiled despite himself. He reached out to give the doctor's specs a helpful nudge back up the man's nose and continued to strategically avoid looking at the body on the slab. The file was dropped in the right place out of happenstance.

"Thank you," Max murmured gratefully, eyes on Morse until he finally moved away.

The detective moved to the drawer in which he knew Debryn kept his own alcohol stash and brought out a set of glasses. This wasn't their first mutual venture into morgue drinking, "Do you always spend Christmas with your family?"

"Most years. The vein of stubbornness runs deep and my sisters take the gathering traditions rather seriously," Max continued his work, his words ringing with a detached sort of automation that indicated more concentration on the body than the speaking. After a moment he snapped off his gloves, moved to the file and notes, and began to write, "The going away was a bit of a surprise. Very unconventional but they want to get holidays in with the children while they're still children I think."

Morse glanced over, caught sight of blood and pale dead flesh, and instead of waiting for Max to join him, filled his small glass and slammed it back. Wincing at the burn he poured two more and waggled a hand for Max to make his way over. Out of his bloody gloves, Debryn was easily baited.

"Sweet ambrosia," Max received his drink with the usual polite dimpled smile. He lifted it for a toast, "Merry Christmas, Morse."

Morse mirrored him with a nod, "Merry Christmas."

They both drank the whiskey down in one go with accompanying squints and gasps and Morse sunk down into the desk chair while Max shook his head at him and went back to work.

Morse turned on the radio, low enough that they could still converse, and set his head back a moment to enjoy _L'Enfance du Christ_ reverberate off the walls of the mortuary.

"You should listen to music in here more often. The acoustics are lovely," Morse poured another shot for them each.

"It's a morgue, Morse, not a concert hall," Max rejoined him this time with his paperwork and a small smile, "And I do, sometimes. I can't ruin my bristly reputation too much."

"Lover of the arts not intimidating enough?"

"One must maintain a guise of respectability. First it's music, next they'll find out I like films and watch telly. God forbid," He took his second drink, "Then it's a slippery slope to being a relatable and personable man."

"Couldn't have that."

"Absolutely not. Remember Morse, the way to a good reputation is to endeavour to be what you desire to appear."

Max took an easy sip of his new drink, put the file in a pile on the desktop, and went back to the body.

"Explain to me what you're doing," Morse finally said. He took another sip of whiskey, just a sip now out of caution and hauled himself to his feet as the song on the radio changed. He was doing his best to sound bold as brass and feel bolstered by the subtle buzz of hard liquor in his near empty stomach.

Debryn looked entertained, "How much have you got ahead of me on that bottle?"

"Not far. I told you I'm working on doing better with the bodies."

"You've been saying that some years now. I'll be hearing that from you into the next decade at this rate," Max snorted, "I'm almost finished. You can much easier just have a seat and it'll be two shakes."

"No, no. I can do this," Morse wasn't washed out and pale as he might be this close to a bloody mess, "Every time I feel faint, I'll take another drink."

"And be laid out beside this gent in less than an hour," Max snorted.

Morse stubbornly frowned, "Get on with it."

Max tilted his head and started to explain the current step in the process. Minutes later, when Morse nearly keeled over, he could only laugh.

***

"No," Max's hand slid over the rim of the glass to stop Morse pouring him another, "One of us has to be able to drive."

"If you can drive, Max, you're doing it wrong," Morse only called him Max when he was well on his way to being plastered, neither of them were working, or both. Max's corpse had been put away and cleaned up after and the halls outside the morgue doors were dim. Neither man had bothered looking at the clock to see how late it actually was.

"How else were you planning on getting home if I don't drive, Morse?" Max's ears were tipped in red and his bowtie had joined Morse's neck tie in being discarded to the desktop. They'd both claimed the only chairs in the morgue and sat crowded close to Max's busy desktop. The radio had been turned off when a recitation of _A Christmas Carol_ began and they both decided they didn't much want to relive the seasonal ghostly hallucinations of an ornery loner.

"It's not so bad in here without the fresh meat," Morse glanced about, "It rings like a cathedral."

Somehow that seemed to strike Max softly and he looked momentarily very endeared by the sentiment.

"I started in choir as a boy because every time my mother took me into a church I would start to sing. Loud. Just to hear it echo. It was probably more hollering than singing, if I'm honest," Morse turned his glass in his fingers and smiled, then cast his head back unprompted and let out a clear and loud 'Amen' in his seldom heard tenor. It did ring pleasantly off of all that polished metal just as Morse had said it would.

Max watched him with small pleasure before he snuck out a hand and covered the top of Morse's glass as well, "You have definitely had too much. First you willingly spent your Christmas Eve in a morgue, and now you're reminiscing about your childhood and singing. Where's your seed pod? Surely, our Morse has been body snatched."

Morse looked at the doctor's hand on his glass, worked through his wool-thick mental processes a moment, and then quietly covered the hand with his own.

***

The snow was still falling when they finally left the hospital and both men paused a moment to listen to the bells toll and enjoy the muted quiet that snowfall always brought. Both were pink nosed and dusted in snowflakes when they finally settled into Max's car and shook themselves lightly. Morse was quiet now, enjoying the fuzzy outline of the world after the amount of whiskey he'd very quickly imbibed. It was easier to move through life when his hard edges were wrapped in cottony alcoholic insulation.

He'd had a surprisingly enjoyable evening in the mortuary with Max, strides better than being alone, and it was certainly a memorable way to spend Christmas. The doctor was always good company and Morse had finally accepted that he and Max were dancing around something between them, something most wouldn't accept, but _something_ just the same.

When he looked at the doctor now, dotted in the sparkle of melted snowflakes, he knew his feelings couldn't be wrong.

"What's your Christmas morning looking like then?" Morse asked before Max even started the engine.

"I'm not allowed to work. Likely, a big breakfast and opening the couple of gifts my sisters posted to me. I was thinking of putting together some eggnog and I'll probably watch something on the telly. You?"

"Nothing so grand," Morse thought that all sounded rather cosy and nice, "Cereal and a crossword?"

"Oh come on now," Max started the car and sat back in his seat but didn't pull away yet, "You've got no imagination or Christmas spirit."

"There's a holiday concert I thought about attending," Morse finally admitted, "You wouldn't want to join me, would you?"

Max looked surprised, receptive, but expectantly reluctant.

Morse stopped him before he started, "I don't care what people might say."

Max breathed, "You should."

Morse sighed and even through the alcoholic haze he gave it all a think. He knew his lines of caution were lower than usual and he knew what he was proposing wasn't acceptable by most's standards, but he wanted it. He wanted to see where it took him.

Them. Where it took _them_.

The pathologist let out a labored sigh after a think of his own. He finally took the car out of park, "You're a rather piteous soul, Morse."

By his lofty and patronizing tone, Morse could tell he'd passed some unspoken Max Debryn test.

"Tis the season of giving. I could hardly stand knowing you'll spend your morning cold and alone," Max then cut him a tenuous glance, "There's a guest room, food and a warm fire at mine. Why don't you give me the details on this concert?"

***

Besides the pair of men skidding across the overly soft snow on their way up Debryn's front path and clinging desperately to one another as they proceeded to shuffle delicately along the dangerous walkway and not fall, the journey home was quiet and peaceful. The roads were almost deserted on the holiday eve and the snow and city lights were a bit enchanting, especially to whiskey soaked sensibilities.

Morse had only been here once before, that night not very long ago when a pub night had their conversation spilling over into a nightcap and they talked until they began to doze off beside one another on the sofa. He hadn't wanted to leave at all, Max hadn't seemed to want it either but neither man had the will to say otherwise. His exit had been awkward and confused and Morse had woken up with regrets and what-if's plaguing the back end of all his thoughts of Max since. Tonight's offer felt reassuring, a solid and mutual acknowledgement.

Stepping into the foyer and shedding their coats was like shedding layers of doubt and hesitation. The expectation of the outside world, the constraints of work and reputation, all of it could be hung by the door with his mackintosh for a little while. It was like Inspector Thursday said, leave it at hallstand. It was freeing. Behind him, Max turned the lock on the front door and the metallic snap resounded solidly the other man's unspoken agreement.

Morse watched Max shift mercurially as he shed The Doctor with his greatcoat and set him aside with his kit. The stiff formality melted from his shoulders when The Doctor was left behind and Max replaced him. He was a man of easier smiles and louder laughs accompanying his barbs, of casual touches when he drifted close or even now, when he gestured Morse towards the parlor. The Doctor was not a lie, but a different aspect of a complicated man, the professional and public face. Morse felt privileged to know him better than that, to be allowed to.

"Make a fire would you?" Max's hand had pressed a moment to his lower back as he passed him to move down the hall, "I'm thinking of hot cocoa. Any strong opinions on the matter?"

Morse huffed a moment in amusement at how serious a question it had been, "Only that I get a spot of bourbon in mine."

"I was thinking peppermint schnapps, in fact," Max bobbed on his toes in his usual, punctuating way.

"Even better."

When Max returned some time later clutching two steaming mugs, Morse was on the floor in front of the hearth in his stocking feet. He'd started the wood stove and sat with his head and arm on top of a steepled knee while he stared at the slowly growing flames. Hearing Max's steps he turned to attention and unfolded in a few strides to accept one of the mugs from the man's grasp.

"Cheers," Max nodded but before he could move to sit, he was stopped.

"Thanks for this, Max," Morse's voice had softened and his free hand rested on Max's arm to still him.

The diminutive doctor got an unreadable expression and Morse detected a hint of discomfort with being thanked. He sported the same look any time he received a real compliment, "No one should be alone on Christmas."

"What about you?"

Max didn't have a quick retort for that but his lips parted as if he were about to concoct some clever snap to put Morse off. That was the last thing he wanted. Morse's finger shot out, pointing straight up above their heads and it halted Max's response instantly. The doctor's brow furrowed and his eyes trailed up above Morse's pointing finger to the sprig of mistletoe strung up on a nail in the doorway.

Max's ears went a shade pinker but he retained his gravel when he griped, "Must've been the charlady…"

"It's bad luck to refuse," Morse said lightly.

"Is that you asking?" Max looked suddenly very intent and there was a bit of challenge in his tone.

Morse's eyes narrowed at the tone but he couldn't help a small amused smile. Everything between them turned into a minor battle eventually. Max's question felt like a dare and it was one he couldn't refuse.

Morse simply answered with a kiss.

It was warm and whiskey and the day's-faded aftershave. It was peppermint-cocoa air between them and tight fingers curled and held around his wrist. It was pulses pounding in accelerated tattoo just under the skin. It was quiet and eager and soft and surprised and when they finally broke apart and Max sunk back to his heels they both were sharper eyed and looking rightly pleased.

"Is this what they mean by good will to men?" Max quipped lightly.

"Don't ruin the moment, Max," Morse puffed out with amusement.

"I'm not sure I could if I tried," Max chuckled despite himself and finally took a step back.

Morse reached out and snagged his free hand. He let their fingers curl together and hold, but he only delayed Max for one more second before he joined him, "Merry Christmas, Max."

Debryn's pinkie curled around his own and he squeezed as he urged him along to sit by the fire, "Merry Christmas."

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to do a Max and Morse Christmas piece. 
> 
> I spent most of the Christmas season doing other things and my boys needed some attention.
> 
> I am, in fact, publishing this on New Year's Day - so it's my first fic of 2019. 
> 
> Happy Holidays everyone!


End file.
